UNOLS SWAP MEET

A Line in the Sand Regarding

Wireless Setups on UNOLS Ships and Port Facilities

 

Toby Martin (Oregon State University) 

Val Schmidt (LDEO-Columbia)

Geoff Davis (Scripps/UCSD)

 

Purpose:

            The purpose of this document is to provide a first look at voluntary hardware selection and operating guidelines for UNOLS vessels for wireless networking interoperability between UNOLS ships, between a ship and a UNOLS port facility, or between UNOLS ships and instrumented buoys or other devices.  Toward that end, an ongoing discussion of the SWAP (Ship-to-Ship/Shore Wireless Access Protocol) sub-group of RVTEC has ensued.  From these discussions and others, we propose the following guidelines and topics for further discussion:

 

Our Story/Scenarios

 

  1. A ship pulls into its home port, and before the ship hits the pier, a wireless network link is made automatically to the local shore network and larger Internet.
  2. Same as 1 except the port is not the ship’s home port, but UNOLS facility offering this service.
  3. A wireless network link is generated automatically between two ships at sea when they are in reception range.  This requires no user interaction, and automated processes that look for the presence of the other ship will execute over the link to dedicated known hosts on the peer ship.
  4. A link is generated automatically between three or more ships at sea when in reception range.  If ship A is in range of ship B but not ship C, ship B can still forward packets on to ship C from ship A.  (“Hidden nodes” are still routable.)
  5. In the case of 3 or 4, if one ship is outfitted with a broadband satellite link to shore (e.g. RoadNet), shipboard personnel can provide the other ships access to that link via the wireless ship-to-ship service. The satellite linked ship maintains usage statistics for link cost sharing between vessels and PIs.
  6. An instrumented buoy outfitted with a wireless radio is externally triggered to attempt a wireless connection with a passing ship.  When the connection is made, the buoy’s data and operating status are downloaded to a known server on that ship.
  7. A ship passing within radio range of a participating shore facility maintains a constant data link to shore.  The link might serve ships operating near institutions without deep water ports (e.g. an Ice Breaker passing Barrow), or ships conducting local coastal surveying, testing instrumentation or whatever.

 

After much discussion at RVTEC and among RVTEC members and the Seattle Wireless Group, it has been decided that we do not in fact have the requisite working knowledge of the capabilities and shortcomings of the currently available candidate hardware to make sound recommendations and plans that will meet the goals set forth in the scenarios above.  Therefore, we propose to conduct a series of coordinated events, in which a few interested parties can collect, configure and test a host of equipment and operating scenarios.  We envision this will require at least two separate events, the first to vet the capabilities of a handful of hardware devices, the second to engineer a working model to propose to the UNOLS community. 

 

Event times and locations have been chosen, in so far as possible, to coincide with other travel and not to conflict with our already hectic schedules.  The first event will likely occur in mid-December, shortly following AGU.  The likely host site will be UCSD/Scripps, and the event will occur over weekend and a few following days.  The goal of this first event will be to test and vet the capabilities of three candidate hardware vendors and their ability to route wireless traffic between networks.  Specifically, we need to determine

 

1.       The capability of these devices to automatically bring up links when in range of other devices of the same ESSID and to restore these links when they are broken.

2.       The ability of these devices to accept and correctly utilize routing rules between wired networks via the wireless link.

3.       The ability of these devices to create and adjust routing tables dynamically as new devices come into, or drop out, of range.

 

The second collaborative event location is to be hosted by the University of Hawaii.  Steve Paulos and the University of Hawaii Marine Office has offered to host the event as Hawaii is a port often visited by UNOLS ships from other institutions and would be a logical place for the first facility installation.  Timing for this event is yet to be fully determined, but has been proposed for the final week of January 2004. Goals for this event will include:

 

  1. Setup and evaluation of a host of test cases to mimic each of the “scenarios” outlined above.  This is expected to be an iterative process as various methods and options are tried to find the most logical fit.
  2. Documentation of solutions and recommendations based on the results.
  3. A first installation of the system.
  4. Determination of a clear plan of action regarding how to fund, administer and install devices throughout the fleet.

 

The results of these efforts will be compiled into a set of guidelines and recommendations for implementation aboard UNOLS vessels and at UNOLS port facilities.  Guidelines will also be created for buoy and mooring subsystems that can be disseminated to the larger scientific community. Furthermore documented prototypes will be created from which subsequent installations can be mimicked to help ensure operational success.  A plan of action will be put into place to assist member institutions in equipment installation and configuration.